


-pigments

by danniburgh



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Blood and Violence, F/M, Hypnotism, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Not What It Looks Like, Painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24371362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danniburgh/pseuds/danniburgh
Summary: a house, a marriage, some paintings...a concerned wife, an absent husband and a weird ass book.
Kudos: 5





	-pigments

I love my husband.

I really do.

But lately he's behaving... odd.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I dislike odd, actually that could be the word to describe our marriage, but his behavior has been... not his.

We've been married five years, and I like to think that I'm part of the only few people that really know him; his parents died long before he met me and he only has a couple of friends left who he gets together with a few nights a month to catch up and have a few beers. But his behavior is different.

He used to hang out with a lot more people until I came around.

He lost a lot of friends when he decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.

Apparently marrying a girl seventeen years younger makes you a pariah.

And even though I know he doesn't resent me for it, I know he misses them. And I can't blame him.

So shortly after we began our life together he found soothness and refuge in painting.

He has an incredible talent for it, he can create masterpieces with two or three brushes and a couple of paints. He even quit his job when he realized he'd make more money out of his paintings.

And I couldn't be more proud of him. He's an amazing artist.

But lately I worry about him.

He stopped going out. He used to go to the park near our house to paint, he used to spend hours there just watching the sky and listening the singing of the birds. He used to take me out on nice dinner dates and we'd drive for hours just to spend a weekend out of the house. But he stopped.

He stopped talking. We could talk for hours before going to bed, he'd tell me stories about his parents or memories of his childhood. But he stopped.

He stopped caring. Caring for himself and for me. He'd spend entire days just reading the same book in the living room floor, or hours upon hours perfecting a painting, days without eating, without showering, without even seeing me. He just... stopped.

And I wanted to know really bad why... but as you may imagine, he didn't tell me when I asked and I didn't know where to even begin to look.

I talked to his friends and they were as worried as I was, he wasn't talking to them either and one of them suggested he was just hooked into a painting.

I was so worried about him that I started buying that, because I didn't like to think that he was getting bored of me. And I didn't want to think that he was losing his mind.

One day I came home earlier, the day had been offly quiet, gray and cold, when I entered the house I got startled by the darkness inside, every light was off and every curtain was closed. The air inside got denser and the silence, louder.

I yelled his name but as usual, no answer came back, I started opening the curtains to let a little of dimmed sunlight in and went to see if he was in the study, where he painted, I passed by the kitchen and saw a bunch of mason jars on the counter, some of them were empty, some of them had water and some of them had paint inside.

The hallway was really dark, I turned on the light and walked ahead, the door was locked and I yelled his name again. I couldn't hear a thing and I was starting to fear. I ran to the kitchen where we kept the house keys and rushed to open the door.

The room was dark and the air felt heavy, I turned the light on and found him.

He was sitting on the floor, in the middle of the room.

All the furniture inside was put away in a corner and the only thing there in the middle with him was his easel, empty, no canvass.

The floor was filled with red paint, all over, as if he had moped around the room with just red, bright paint and he was sitting on it.

He turned around to see me when he noticed I was there, and smiled at me when he saw me looking at him. The grin adorning his face was one I had never seen before, and suddenly I felt tears running down my face.

Then I was sure of the one thing I didn't want to be sure.

He was losing his mind.

For a short time after the "red incident" as I named it he snapped out of his odd phase. He wasn't his old self but at least he stopped not being there.

He agreed going to therapy with me and went back to paint what he used to paint.

For a few days it was like living again the days when I first met him, those days of me working in my desk and smiling at the feeling of him staring at me across the office.

I was so glad and proud of him coming back to me that I didn't notice when it all started again.

He started locking himself up in the study to read that damn book that he always read and started not talking to me anymore and started not eating a bit and started not caring all over again.

And I wanted to do something again but I realized I didn't do anything the first time. I wanted to help him but I didn't know how. I wanted him to come back to me but I realized he never did in the first place.

He never came back. He just was there trying to make me believe he was okay. And I did.

Because I love him.

One night he came to bed and fell asleep in seconds, I woke up and for a while I just watched him sleep. I watched his face with paint smudges and his hands dirty all relaxed and I fell for him all over again. I so wanted to know what was going on. I so wanted to see what kept him away from me.

So I went to the study and locked myself up to find what was the thing that was so damn interesting and important and vital that he was letting himself rot in that room.

I found paints and discarded canvasses, I found dried brushes and empty paint tubes, I found dirty paper towels and watercolor paper. And I found the book.

The book he read so passionately for so many hours.

I opened it and I couldn't stopped myself for letting out a laugh.

It was full of nonsense. The pages were full of red scribbles and gibberish. Every single page was filled with nonsensical symbols and drabbles painted with red and orange and brown ink and none of it was readable.

I closed the book and let it down where I found it, wondering how on earth that book could make him be so interested. Questioning how that weird book could make him act so hypnotized.

I opened the door to go back to our room and he was standing there, he looked like he had waited for me outside, he wasn't looking at me. His face had no expression. I called him and he didn't answered, he didn't even acknowledge me.

I put my hands gently on his chest and moved them to his shoulders, trying to move him away of the doorway. When he felt my push he looked at me right into the eyes and smiled. It wasn't that weird grin he had given me the day of the red incident, it was his smile, his kind, warm and affective smile.

I smiled back at him and he cupped my face and for the first time in months he gave me a kiss.

And for the first time in months, we made love.

This morning I woke up blissfully happy, I turned to see him but I didn't found him, I saw the clock on his nightstand and noticed it was way past noon. I got out of bed and walked out to find him inside the study, I called his name and came to hug me, telling me he had a gift for me, I smiled and asked what it was as he grabbed my hand and pulled me into the room, he smiled back at me and showed me my gift.

It was a painting. A painting of us.

Inside the canvas we were embracing, completely naked, covered by ourselves, with a bright fiery red on the background.

It looked like we were floating in an infinite, moving, warming, astonishing, mesmerizing carmine sea.

I smiled so wide my cheeks began to sting, and he embraced me from behind asking me if I liked it.

I nodded and turned my face to see him. He kissed me and I felt like everything was back on track, like I could forget all that had happened in the last few months, like he was going to be the same man I had fallen in love all those years ago.

I wrapped my arms around his as I was letting myself get lost into his gaze when I felt some kind of clothing on his arm.

I looked down and saw a bandage covering his forearm, looked back at him and he smiled at me.

I asked him what had he done.

He muttered that he had put a piece of himself into the painting.

I felt my smile falling onto the floor, I looked at the painting and walked towards it to see it while asking why as he grabbed my arm.

The colors on it looked so attracting. And he said that he needed to be in the painting. And that he needed me to be on it too.

I turned to him and saw him gripping a kitchen knife really close to my arm.

I yelled no really loud and pulled off my arm so he couldn't cut me.

He looked at me confused and I told him not to touch me. He tried to grab my arm again and with my free hand I hit his to toss the knife away. I begged him to stop what he was doing and he got into his knees to look for the knife, that had fallen under the desk.

I walked slowly towards the door, feeling my throat hurt and my eyes sting and hating myself for wanting to cry.

He saw me trying to get out, he stood up and I ran, he ran towards me and pushed me to the wall.

I fell to the floor on my ass feeling my whole face numbing, I grabbed my nose and saw my hand full of my own blood. I felt my whole body shiver and the world spinning. I felt his arms embracing me and heard him apologizing to me. I turned to face him, gasping for air, crying my eyes out, shocked at what he did. He was also crying, like he knew what he had done, like he was feeling the pain I was into.

He looked at my bloody face and ran two fingers across the blood on my skin, staining them.

He let me sitting there in the middle of the hallway bawling in pain and I saw him running to the painting inside, my eyes were so filled with tears that I didn't see what he was doing. He came back to me and did the same on my face, ran his index and middle finger on the open skin of my nose, making me whimper in pain. He ran again into the room and once again came back, I shuddered, thinking he was going to palpate my wound again, but he didn't.

He grabbed my hand and made me look up to his face, he asked if I wanted to see it, telling me now it was finished.

I didn't know why but I nodded, so he helped stand up and walk into the room, I tried to wipe the tears away of my face, failing at it and hurting myself in the process.

We stood in front of the painting and it looked even more red. It looked more mesmerizing, more astonishing, more infinite. It looked hypnotizing. It looked... alive.

He asked me if I liked it, again.

And as I lost myself into the red pigments that adorned the painting, I said yes.

**Author's Note:**

> I first posted it on Reddit because it felt right... but as u may guess it got deleted lmao
> 
> sorry for any errors or misspells, my first language is spanish


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